..rallech, Morocco DLCG=ber 9, 1941
Two days after the burial of the pasha of Ksar es Souk,Thamiel Gja(ui, a man in his late sixties, wearing his customary white robes, climbed into his Delahaye convertible sedan and went to the mosque to pray that Allah had taken the pasha of Ksar es Souk into heaven.
When he had finished praying, he dismissed his bodyguards with a curt wave of his hand and walked slowly and alone through the cool arches of the mosque, circling and circling again the found-tain and pool.
This was always comforting when he was troubled and confused. The mosque had been there for several hundred years before the French had come, and would be there several hundred years after the French were gone. Thinking about that helped him put things into perspective. And often it reminded him of the quatrain of Haji Abdu Yezdi: “Cease, atom of a moment’s span, to hold thyself an all in all. The world is old, and thou art young.”
He missed Hassan el Moulay, the late pasha of Ksar es Souk, both personally and in the discharge of the duties Allah the All-Wise had placed on him.
Personally, they had been close friends, And Hassan had been an especially valuable chamberlain, whose intelligence network was beyond price.
As he walked slowly through the mosque, his face hidden under the hood of his burnoose, Thami el Glaoui recalled that Hassan el Moulay had made first report on Helmut von Heurten-Mitnitz and Sturrabannfuhrer Johann Mfiller not long after their arrival. These two were most likely the people responsible for his friend’s assassination.
The report had given their ranks and titles-minister in the case of von Heurtenmitnitz (which, el Moulay had told el Glaoui, gave him equal footing in diplomatic protocol with the consuls general of the governments accredited to the French colonial authority and th, kingdom of Morocco) and security adviser in the case Of Mfiller. It gave the locations and telephone numbers of their quarters, and the make and license numbers of the automobiles assigned for their use. Within days, their dossiers contained information about their alcohol, drug, and sexual proclivities. Hassan el Moulay had also discovered, among other things, that it was von Heurten-Mitnitz,s intention to stop the flow of jewels and currency from France through Morocco.
The intelligence apparatus set up by the pasha of Ksar es Souk had been extraordinarily capable. Thami el Glaoui wondered if Allah the All-Wise had chosen to strike the pasha of Ksar es Souk down because the pasha had grown too sure of himself.
There were several questions connected with his death. The first and most important of these was whether Hassan himself had been the intended victim, or were the assassins actually after Sidi Hassan el Ferruch? Thami el Glaoui was inclined to believe the latter.
If the assassins were sent by the king of Morocco or by the Germans they would have been after the son, not the father. The son was the smuggler. Killing him would have stopped that immediately and simultaneously warned the father that these activities were known.
The answers would come sooner or later, Thami el Glaoui decided. But for now what would happen was in the hands of Allah.
Since the pashas of Ksar es Souk had been hereditary chamberlains to the pashas of Marrakech for three hundred years, and since Sidi Hassan el Ferruch had become pasha of Ksar es Souk on the death of his father, Sidi now assumed the same responsibility for intelligence his rather had carried. The apparatus was still in place, and the files his father had built over so many years would now be his.
Only Allah knew if he would use them as well as his father had. El Glaoui had sought an answer in the Koran ;nd in prayer, and had concluded as he walked around the reflecting pool that if Allah did HEROES 243 -ros LAST e him as loyally and not intend for Sidi Hassan el Ferruch to serv well as his father had, it would be better to find this out now.
Thanii el Glaoui was so far pleased with Sidi Hassan el Ferruch. For instance, after Sidi returned from “buying horses” in France, el Glaoui Politely suggested that it was time for him to marry and produce children. And, since the Germans were growing suspicious of his travels, he’d suggested that the boy stay out of the public eye as much as possible.